I went back into the archives and discovered these teams. My criteria was playing 6 or 5 in the championship. Time doesn't permit me to go back and research those teams to see if they were playing only 5 or 6 guys all year or if the coach decided for the final to throw caution to the wind and keep just the best guys in there. I also went back to the earliest knowledge of this happening that I knew of which was the..
1963 Loyola Ramblers Yes they won a championship and won it with 5 guys playing all 45 minutes in the championship game against Cincinnati which only used 1 sub for 4 minutes in the same game which is still one of the tourney's biggest upsets.
1974, NCState played only 7 guys, but really 6 as 1 sub had only 2 minutes when they knocked off Al McGuire's Marquette Warriors.
1975 UCLA used 4 guys all 40 minutes and then two others split the other 40 minutes in winning yet another title. This was in contrast to their 60's titles when they had an extremely deep bench.
1977 Marquette used 7 in their win over Deano and UNC.
1988 Billy Tubbs only went 6 deep in one of history's greatest coaching blunders as Larry ran guys in and out with fresher legs.
2003, although this painful game doesn't match my exact criteria of using only 5 0r 6 players Roy only had 7 guys earn minutes that game. I don't remember that team being particularly thin, but I also didn't have KUBuckets where we talked ad nauseum about these things either.
Pretty thin list. Most teams win these days with more than 6 guys in other words. Not sure if we'll basically have to go with 6 or 7 the rest of the way. Bragg may catch a break again like last time, but he may not. But we've got the talent to carry this thing deep into March, but do we have enough to seal the deal? I'm not sure.
